Vigoratus Senior
by CountessCadhla
Summary: "She's lovely." whispered the Doctor.  "You are not alone.", they told him.
1. Chapter 1

_**Vigoratus Senior Part I**_

"_I don't want to be alone."_

No one answered. The TARDIS hummed along its course in the Time Vortex. She was busy traveling, and her Doctor was safe inside. He wasn't safe from those thoughts though. They weren't Time Lord Thoughts. They were the thoughts of a man a sad, old man who couldn't settle and who couldn't hold on no matter how tight his grip was, or how strong his attachment.

When no one answered he wasn't surprised. It was expected, but there was always a chance of an answer. Perhaps someone like Boe could hear him. Someone who had lived for thousands of years and knew pain like no one else could. That would have made the Doctor feel better.

It would have made his pain feel selfish, trifle-like really. It would have bruised his ego enough for him to suck it all in for a few moments and move a few controls, read a few scans visit a few new worlds perhaps. Some fuel to a dying fire, to a dying man.

The thought of someone answering made him save a moon called Cranlicka, save a ship from a black hole, disable a time loop on a tour cruiser with an ambassador aboard. Stuff like that. He even named a nebula that had been mapped out by a mute astronomer from a Druid like people who lived on a rocky planet.

He named it _Rosa Belle Poitevine_. He could have named it_ Rosa bonica, _but those roses weren't as fragrant. _**His**_ Rose had been fragrant. And as soon as he had seen that nebula, glowing and swirling in dust and rock. He had been captivated. It was like if Rose could have regenerated. It would look like the pulsing pink of that nebula all bright and warm looking, glowing and happy with those swirling particles. It was like his Rose was regenerating, trying to come back to him. Trying to find him and skip across time and space with him again with eyes as bright as that nebula.

"Oh that _color._" He had whispered in the mute mans cave. "That color."

The mute astronomer had smiled and handed the Doctor a parchment and slanted wooden stick to dipped in ink.

"I don't understand." The Doctor had said the light of the rose nebula glistening still in his eyes.

The mute gestured to the map and then pointed to the sky. The map was filled with labels of stars and planets. There was a rosy mist in the outskirt middle of the parchment. The nebula needed a name. So the Doctor gave her one.

The mute astronomer had smiled and shaken his head when he had seen what name the Doctor had given it, amused by the oddness of this other being who traveled in the stars.

An _Astrum Res_-a Star Being-the elder astronomers had called him.

They treated him as an elder and gave him such a name. _Curatio Senior, _the_ Healing Elder. _The Doctor didn't quite understand what his name was supposed to mean. But he went along with it.

He sat with them in their hollowed mountain with no roof as they gazed and talked about the sky and it's wonders. They were thousands of years old this race and they could have made advancements to visit the sky and be with the stars. But they nodded and smiled at the Healing Elder when he had asked. "Why not?"

"We are content to watch the beauties of the sky,_ Curatio Senior_. We are watchers, gazers, appreciators of all that is beautiful. It is a peaceful life of looking. Why search for what you have found?"

The smoke from the large ritual fire had burned and burned all night. And while the Elders slept the Doctor had gazed at the stars. He watched and watched that nebula, missing Rose and Donna and Martha. And everyone he had ever loved. He missed the life of John Smith. He wished the impossible things had stayed impossible, and that he could have been happy with a strong woman who loved him, who could give him another family that would stay alive this time. He was at his wedding , he saw his first child with Jane being cradled in his arms; he saw his sons and daughters laughing with him as they were thrown up into the air as they were walking in the woods. He saw himself old and dying peacefully. He had asked if his grandchildren were safe, taken care of. His sweet wife had been there to hold his hand and say "Yes, John, they are safe. And they send their love." And then he had passed, softly without pain and fuss. A life lived. His very life loved by another. He had seen this, and had let it go.

It had made it harder that future life as John Smith was just in his reach. Like when you reach for something high on a shelf, and you know that if you stretch a little further, reach your hand up higher you can get what you want. It was that knowledge of "That life could be mine." That killed him. That it was just arms length away. The Doctor knew that he was no man to do what was simple. There came a time when he had to choose between what was right and what was easy. He didn't regret his choice, but he still mourned at the loss of the one he could have had. Because he imagined it, saw it. Kissed his future on the lips, and still the right thing was to let it go.

"Families have been made because of me. They are all alive because of me." He vented to the mute man over a high cliff on the mountain. He had made the climb with the old man. Something about enlightenment and the Universe speaking to you.

The Doctor dreamed that night about voices, whispers in a colorful void. Something that was just beyond his reach. The whispers never scared him they just made him curious. He wanted to know their secrets. He wanted to know what they were hiding, what they were telling him.

"_Curatio Senior, follow the mute man."_

He could not see the voice but he heard it, loud and clear as if it was spoken right into his ear.

He looked at the mute man who had already started down the narrow path of the mountain. He turned to look at the Doctor for a moment and beckoned him with a wrinkly phalange.

The words of the deep voice seemed to repeat in his mind, but it was more like he was repeating them via memory, dissecting them as Doctors do. Picking at parts like they were new and strange an alien. He wanted to understand quickly and suddenly like he had known already. He went for the obvious, and then the obtuse and then outlandish even by the Doctors standards.

The mute man led him to a dark opening.

The Doctor could see the lines in the walls where tools of the simplest kind had hacked at the ancient stone demanding to be obeyed and become subservient to the desires of the artist. The man beckoned the Doctor to come forward again by a small motion with his wrinkly finger. For a brief moment the Doctor wondered what those fingers had accomplished. Mapped stars and nebulas? Made prophecies about the Healing Elder or his future, the Doctor would have liked to know his future, just this once.

Large doors of stone were illuminated suddenly by torches that lay on either side of the decorated doors. The Doctor had failed to see how the mute man did it. It wasn't relevant. What did matter was how the stone doors mimicked the front doors of the TARDIS.

"These doors are the oldest of its kind. Never before have they been opened. Only labeled to know who was meant to know their secrets."

The Doctor was mildly shocked.

"_I thought you couldn't speak?"_

The not-so-mute-man smiled.

"I never had anything important to say."

The Doctor moved to the doors, examining them sonicing the stone. He felt as if he had shrunk, the stone TRADIS doors where much bigger than their originals about 50 feet bigger actually, if you want a more vivid picture. There was even a lock-like the one on the original TARDIS-and it was the same size to. Could his key really? No. It-it would be impossible.

The Doctor took out his own key cautiously stuck it into the doors, and turned it.

The loudest bolts he had ever heard moved behind the doors, shaking the rock around them, vibrating his vision.

The not-so-mute-man had gone.

"_Never before have they been opened. Only labeled as such to know who was meant to know their secrets."_

These doors were meant to be for the Doctor? He shook his head. And sonicked the doors again, this time carbon-dating the stone.

Just a little over 900 years old. 900 years.

The Doctor did the math in his head before he could ask himself consciously to do the math in his head.

These prophetic doors where the exact age of the Doctor.

In fact these doors where the _exact _same age as the Doctor. They must have been created the date of his very birth. A prophecy of him contained for a little over 900 years.

"Allon-sy." Murmured the Doctor pushing open the doors that lead to the inkiest darkness he had ever felt.

He saw nothing. He felt nothing. He heard nothing.

It was sensory deprivation.

He tried to struggle, but what could he struggle with? He felt no legs, no fingers. It was simply a state of consciousness.

"_Do not struggle, Time Lord. No harm is meant for you."_

The Time Lord attempted to struggle anyways. With what he had not a clue. Perhaps he just imagined himself struggling and that worked enough for him.

"_You are not alone."_

The Doctor stopped thinking about struggling. He stopped altogether. There was only one other being that had ever spoken those words to him-

"_The Face of Boe."_

The Doctor saw then an image of himself kneeling at the glass cage Boe was confined to. With his vapors floating around him in a broken hospital with a cat nurse standing a few feet away. He had an impression of someone else there. Mary? No. Marianne? Marilyn? Who was –?

"**You're tampering with my memories stop it!"** cried the Doctor in his mind.

"_We are simply giving you what you desire most."_

"**What's that?"** growled the 10th regeneration.

"_Peace."_

The Doctor thought long about the words of the mystery voice. Then-

"_**Whose "we" exactly?" **_asked the Doctor.

"_We are not important what is important is what we must show you."_

"**Show me? I thought prophecies were told."** The Doctor was being smart now. But the "_We"_ didn't mind. _They_ already knew he would be like this. And it was not t_heir_ fault. T_hey_ were simply the remedy.

"_Not all prophecies can be explained. There exist no words in our language in which to communicate this prophecy."_

"_**But-"**_

"_What we can tell you is what you need to know to follow your Destiny to meet your Fate. We have decided to give you a contribution."_ The Doctor was suspicious now. He had been offered contributions before. Once it was even the contribution of being "deleted".

"_It is the necessity that is required of all beings. Yours is often taken away. You have saved us for so long, Curatio Senior. It is our gift to you, to show you our everlasting love and appreciation. There is just one thing that we ask of you."_

"_**What is it?"**_

"_You must find your gift."_

"_**Find my gift? What's the point of that?"**_

"_She was found for you. Thousands of ages ago our people prophesized of Astrum Res, and his loneliness and pain were of great quantity in our prophecies; the empty hero who lost his true sight of the stars because he had not one for himself." _

"_**You created woman for me?"**_

"_No, Astrum Res. We prophesized of a single person."_

"_**The person already existed they just had to fit the criteria" **_he murmured_**. "So-wait! You prophesized a **__**soul mate**__**?"**_

"_**Yes."**_

_Flashes of a life flew before the Doctor's eyes as if they had been on a large movie screen. He saw everything of a single woman's life. Her childhood her obsessions her pet peeves. He saw everything and in an instant knew everything. Then it was just her. Sitting in front of what appeared to be a mirror. She couldn't see them. But they could see her. She turned her head from side to side. She pinched her cheeks. Which the Doctor now noticed had freckles on them. She hadn't had those when she was a child. They were beauty marks .She frowned at something and suddenly smiled laughing at something someone was saying to her in the doorway. It looked like her mother. _

"_She's lovely." whispered the Doctor._

"_**You are not alone."**_


	2. Chapter 2

_**Vigoratus Senior II**_

The Doctor was frantic now. He ran from the prophetic doors that had been waiting for him for thousands of years and ignored the now-not-mute-man as he waddled back to his camp. The Elders had shook their heads as the Doctor kicked up dust. The Doctor felt like he only had 42 minutes. Like he could blink and his opportunity would be gone faster than you could believe. Like she would be exterminated or deleted.

The thought made him run faster his brown coat whipping behind him in a frenzy of wool and dust. He didn't even remember where the TARDIS was. He just followed what felt right. Wasn't that what he was supposed to do? Follow what felt right? Had what he was doing, _**right now**_ been prophesized? The TARDIS couldn't seem farther from the Doctors reach. He slid on the rubble and crashed into the blue doors fumbling with the key and all but ripping the handle of the door off.

He didn't bother to throw his coat on the support next to the door; he just jumped up to the controls yanking the screen around, hitting a bazillion and few buttons, rolling a paperweight and wrenching various levers. He was in no mood for a smooth ride to Earth.

He regretted it when he was bounced around in a magnetic turbulence around the planet he was attempting to leave.

He had to meet her.

Didn't have a clue as to how he would. _**Well,**_ he wasn't entirely clueless. He could run in dashing and all save the day get the damsel and skip off couldn't he? He knew her. In those flashes of her he had seen the Doctor knew she liked faerie tales -the Disney versions of the stories, not the Grimm versions. _**Well**_, some versions-

The Doctor shuddered.

What a mistake it was to introduce himself to the Brothers Grimm. Dull lot, kept talking about versions of "Once Upon a Time". It took all the Doctor had for them to not use "A Long time ago…In a galaxy far far away…"

Various symbols ushered themselves across the screen. The Doctor flipped a few switches. Hit one with his foot. When the screen was left un occupied it read:

"**Destination: Earth. Year: 2010"**

Then-

"_**ASTEROID WARNING!"**_

"Bollocks."


	3. Chapter 3

He wasn't in England anymore. He was in the States. In some tourist town where the locals hated tourists because they never knew where they were going.

He was standing across the street of a coffee house. Plumes or something like that.

_**Well.**_

What in the name of Gallifrey was he supposed to do?

Give him Daleks, give him Cyber men just for the love of huon energy do not give him a woman!

A _human_ woman none the less.

He paced-as he does- on the corner, running a hand through his unkempt hair, sonicing the coffee shop. Ignoring an old woman's remark about "a light up pen".

Nope. Still human.

Nothing. All normal. _Normal?_

"_**What?"**_ he yelled.

A few tourists in white socks and Hawaiian shirts looked at him.

"What?" he growled.

He looked over to the coffee shop again. She sat in the window seat, people watching. She had a banana. He liked bananas. He liked them with Cheerios too.

_Well_, sometimes.

She was reading a book.

He crouched behind a trash bin, peeking through the top cap. _**Harry Potter?**_

"Oh.." he sighed nodding his head. "I cried at the last one."

She looked like-a mix. Of something. A some people. People he had met.

He shrugged. Why waste time when it could be spent with her?

"Allon-sy!" he leapt to soon in the street and was nearly run over by a bicycle. What an awful way for the last Time Lord to go. He entered the coffee shop cautiously, feeling nervous. His hearts pounding in his chest making his mind fly in all universal directions.

"Sir? Sir?"

"_What?" _ He was saying that a lot today.

"Can I help you?"

Time Lord. Soul mate. Harry Potter. **Coffee shop.** Bingo, that's the thought he needed.

"I'll have what she's having." He pointed at her in the window. The teenage barista grinned.

"Yeah we get that a lot with her in here."

"_What?" _ Oh dammit.

"One hot chocolate and a Napoleon, that's-" he pushed a few plastic covered buttons "Six twenty three."

The Doctor whipped out the psychic paper without glancing at the kid. She was twirling her hair around her finger and it was catching in the light.

"Oh! Uh-right. Sorry,dude-uh!Sir! I didn't know the Health Inspector was supposed to visit. We have another three months on the notice-"

"I'm a surprise. Shh!" the Doctor put a finger to his lips grinning like a kid. The teenager stupidly did the same.

He strolled over slightly more confident.

"Hello I'm the-"

"I don't care." She flipped a page.

"Oh."

"Yeah." She finished.

"You get-"

"This a lot? Yeah."

"Oh." The Doctors mouth went unnecessarily "O"-pen.

"Hot chocolate and a Napoleon for the Health Inspector!" the teenager quipped. The Doctor winced. What perfect timing that kid had.

"On the house, Inspector." the kid whispered like it was a major secret.

"I'm the Doctor." He casually said sitting next to her at the window.

She seemed to perk at that. She closed her book. He noticed a stake of them next to her.

"A Doctor? I thought you were a Health Inspector?"

"Only on the weekends!" he grinned sheepishly.

She blinked.

"It's Wednesday."

Oops.

"_Wel_l, I was called in for an emergency. The other guy had a nasty stomach flu."

"Right." She drank a soda sitting in front of her. The name of the label sounded familiar-.

"Harry Potter,eh? How do you like it? Good ol' J.K!"

She laughed at that.

"The third one's my favorite, actually. And I suppose you're going to tell me it's yours too.?"

"Nope!" he munched on the Napoleon. He noted somewhere in his mind to come back for another one.

"I like the last one! I cried when Hedwig died!"

"_**WHAT?"**_

"_What?"_

_Oops. Must not be out yet._

"You've read the last boo-?"

_.Bzzz._

"Hold on!"

The Doctor padded his suit then sorted through his pockets.

Sonic. Opera ticket circa 1873. Rock of Mars. Tissue.

He swore Time Lord pockets were bigger on the inside. TARDIS key. Tissue. Rubber band. Banana. Duct tape.

Wrench. Post-it. Vial he stole from Einstein. Travel pack liquid detergent. Sea sponge. _Sea sponge?_ _Really?_ AH-HA!

Pager.

"Oh. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He muttered. "Gah! Are you still going to be here?"

He started cramming everything back into his pockets. Something squished. Probably the banana.

Ew.

"Umm-I guess. Yeah."

"BRILLIANT!"

He hugged her though he had once told Martha to never waste time on hugs and then ran to the door across the street to the TARDIS. Hmm. She smelt like-

"Wait! You forgot your light up pen!"


	4. Chapter 4

The Doctor didn't have time for this.

_Well_, he did. But she didn't.

"Inspector! Inspector!"

Honestly, the TARDIS had to blow another chameleon circuit now and compromise the fragment links? Great now he had to supersede the binary-

"Doctor!"

"That's me!"

There she was, caramel hair billowing past her shoulders. Wow. It was long, like the renaissance. So wavy like the gaseous clouds of Clandora 5-

"You forgot your pen."

She handed him the sonic screwdriver.

"Oh! I have been forgetting that lately."

**.Bzz.**

"Oh! I have to take care of this." He threw open the door to the TARDIS.

"Wanna come in?"

She glared at him with amber eyes.

"That Police Box can't even fit one-"

His jacket already disappeared. She opened the door following him in.

"Hey! These boxes are from the-oh holy jesu."

The TARDIS closed behind her.

"Oh. Oh! Oh my god! Doctor?"

He peeked over a large-paperweight?

"Oh! You're here! That was faster than I thought." He murmured scratching his head a little remise.

"But! But! Oh my god!" She fell over the stairs, eye's wide as saucers.

The Doctor waited. Come on she _had_ to say it!

"This place? How is it? It's-it's"

The Doctor leaned over in his chair. Wait for it, wait for it.

"It's impossible!"

Gah.

"Yes. _And_-"

"It's bigger on the inside!"

"_**YES!"**_

She jumped at his enthusiasm. Had he punched the air?

"That's just _brilliant_ that you said that!" he beamed hand in a pocket of his brown suit.

"This place is _fantastic!"_

He stopped pulling levers. His ninth incarnation used to say that. Her eye's were as big as- the TARDIS lurched throwing her at him. When he landed with human woman on top of him he usually minded- a lot. But now-

She was up before he was. He felt slightly disappointed.

She was examining the levers looking at the screen.

"What happened? Did we get hit by a car?"

The Doctor came around behind her putting a hand over hers. She glanced at his face. He was very handsome. And a Doctor too! Her mother would be ecstatic! Probably start calling him McDreamy-

"It wasn't a car. No! No! **NO**!" he growled "Just what I thought!"

He leapt over the railing onto the platform beneath. So much enthusiasm she wondered if it counted in _every_ aspect of the Doctors life. She shook her head_. Dear god you've only just meet him…_

"The binary wiring on the chameleon circuit has fused to some of the navigation grids!"

They lurched again she yelped holding onto the screen.

"So-_bad_?" she called over her shoulder.

"Yes!"


	5. Chapter 5

"Time And Relative Dimensions In Space?"

"Yup." He popped the p.

"No way! Show me!"

"Okay. Stand by the doors. Open them when I tell you to!"

He rushed around the panel of the TARDIS. Pulling a lever, rolling the(yes it was indeed a paperweight) pulling a stick shift avoiding the blue buttons. Yanking the screen twisting a single finger in circles looking for a specific-something. Until-

"EUREKA! Okay. Now!"

She threw open the doors.

She had always wanted to see the Milky Way.

She reached out and almost felt the stars, she took a step.

"Whoa! Not out!" The Doctor came and put an arm around her waist keeping her pulled in.

"But-the air-?"

"I extended the lateral shields and the atmosphere parameters." He stated nodding his head in agreement with himself.

"Oh."

The Doctor looked down at her from the corner of his eye a smirk tugging on his lips. He liked that little look on her face. She had no clue, but she went with it anyways. Of course he had plenty of time to teach her.

He started to whistle.

"No! Don't!" She put a hand to his mouth. "It's bad luck to whistle at the lights!"

He smiled and pulled out a mirror from his pocket shining it in the lights of the Milky Way.

She also grinned.

He gave her a tour of the TARDIS. There were so many rooms she asked if there were staircases to nowhere and doors with brick walls behind them. He had laughed.


End file.
